Saturday, October 22, 2005

Shaving 2.0

On Wednesday, as I was shaving in the morning, I realized that last Friday, I had misinterpreted my shaving gel incident. Rather than it having been some general life lesson that I was being given, it was instead a direct warning about the events of the following Sunday. Indeed, that was the last time I shaved before breaking my metacarpal, and so that was the last opportunity to send me that message.

Think about it: what do autumn leaves do? They throw themselves at terminal velocity to the frozen ground. Don't look down; I did look down, to watch my hand twisting away underneath me, in a way it never had before.

So, that immediately raises the question: who attempted to warn me not to wildly pursue that frisbee to my doom? Why did they choose the medium of shaving gel and an obscure Leonard Cohen song? The first name that comes to mind, naturally, is Leonard himself. I assume that while meditating on a mountaintop somewhere in California, as the sun broke over the horizon he foresaw my injury, and immediately attempted to warn me. I submit to you, the first miracle of Leonard Cohen.

Had a rough week? I sure did. There's no better way to finish things off on a good note then by rereading 'Super-Frog Saves Tokyo' by Haruki Murakami (who is apparently currently on a tour of the US northeast).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Murakami is at Harvard as a fellow for a year. He just gave a seminar at MIT a few weeks ago. Takashi emailed me about it, but i had to miss it for my violin lesson. I hope your hand recovers soon and fully

Tall Medstudent said...

Didn't Takashi go back to Japan?

That talk is on the web, at:

http://lossless.blogs.com/main/2005/10/haruki_murakami.html